Church said nothing.
“Yeah,” said Bolton, “I figured that would get your attention. Someone is trying to sell one of the Unlearnable Truths.”
INTERLUDE EIGHT
BELL FAMILY ESTATE
MONTAUK ISLAND, NEW YORK
WHEN PROSPERO WAS TWELVE
The man looked like what he was.
A killer. Though Oscar Bell knew that this was a side effect of his profession, not a calling. The man was not psychotic or sociopathic, and from the reports Bell had paid for, it seemed clear the thief did not particularly enjoy killing. It was a means to an end when all other options proved inefficient.
Bell could appreciate that. The blood he had on his own hands—at however many removes—was equally cold. Emotional attachments to that sort of thing created problems.
Bell hated problems. What made him happy were solutions.
“What do I call you?” asked Bell.
“Priest,” said the killer. They sat on opposite sides of Bell’s big desk. They hadn’t shaken hands when the thief arrived. Bell’s courtesy extended to providing the man a cold beer, which sat untouched, beads of sweat running down the outside of the bottle. Bell hadn’t even suggested a glass of his very old, very extraordinary scotch. The killer was dressed in a dark suit, with a white shirt and dark tie. His sunglasses lay on the edge of the desk.
“‘Priest’?”
“An old joke,” said the killer. “You had to be there.”
“Whatever,” said Bell. “You come very highly recommended, Mr. Priest.”
The man said nothing; merely lifted a finger and let it drop back.
“And yet,” said Bell, “your former employer was killed.”
Priest smiled. “Not on my watch. My team was in Yemen when that went down.” He spoke with a faint Spanish accent. Cultured and elegant, though Bell thought it was overlaid atop a more plebian one. A self-made man.
“Would things have been different had you been there?” asked Bell.
“I could not say,” said Priest. “I wasn’t there.”
Bell shifted the subject. “Have you had time to go over my request?”
“I have.”
“And—?”
“I asked a few discreet questions and received some interesting leads,” said the killer.
“How interesting?”
“We do not yet have a contract, Mr. Bell. I did not mind asking those questions, but sharing the answers is different.”
“Fair enough.” Bell opened a drawer and removed an envelope, weighed it in his hand, and then tossed it onto the desk. Priest took it, opened it, leafed through the sheaf of bearer bonds.
“It’s light.”
“It’s enough to pay for those answers. If I like what I hear we’ll negotiate a fee for the rest.”
Priest nodded. “The Unlearnable Truths aren’t a myth. References to them have been heavily fictionalized, but they are real.”
“And you know this for a fact?”
“I do. It’s why my colleagues referred you to me. I have had some experience with rare collectibles of this kind.” Priest grinned, showing a lot of white teeth. “You might say that this is kind of ‘my thing,’ as the saying goes. It is a very small community of people who deal in such things, and a much smaller group who know about the Unlearnable Truths. Whoever told you about these books, though, must have very specialized information sources.”
“That’s an understatement,” muttered Bell. “Continue, please.”
“Do you know the phrase ‘Index Librorum Prohibitorum’?”
“I can translate the Latin. Let me see … ‘list of prohibited books.’ Something like that?”
Priest nodded. “The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a list of books deemed heretical, lascivious, or anticlerical. Exciting, yes? Intriguing. Such a list makes you hunger to know what is in those books, does it not?”
“I will admit that I have a certain interest,” conceded Bell.
“Yes,” purred Priest. “The first list was authorized by Pope Paul IV in 1559.”
“Ah,” said Bell, “you’re talking about the Pauline Index.”
“Then you have heard of it.”
“A passing reference,” said Bell. “I’m not too familiar with it. Feel free to explain.”
Priest laughed. “You would not believe what I would tell you.”
Bell sipped his scotch. “I wouldn’t make assumptions, friend. Now, stop dancing around it. Give me the basics. I catch on pretty quickly.”
“Very well. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum has two parts. One was made public through priests whose job it was to remove restricted texts from their parishes. These priests would visit homes and inspect books to make sure that their flocks had no access to heretical, blasphemous, or obscene materials, yes? And as the years passed this became less official and more of an advisement. Banned books, book burnings. These things happen even today.”
“Sure. There are a lot of very aggressive idiots in the world. I do business with some of them.”
“You disapprove?”
“Whatever else I am, Mr. Priest, I am not a fan of censorship, and particularly enforced censorship. It gets in the way of the flow of information. Now, you said that there were two parts…?”
“The main list is the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. That is the published list of forbidden books. But there is a second list that is shared only among the most trusted members of the inner circle at the Vatican. This list is never named except in oblique references, but in the house of the Goddess—and to a few true scholars—this most secret of lists is known as the Unlearnable Truths. Many of these books have been found and destroyed by the Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum.”
Bell picked his way through that translation, as well. “The Order of the Brothers of the Lock…? What’s that?”
“They are a very ancient brotherhood of warrior priests. This brotherhood was created by a papal bull, but you will never find a record of it in any church history. They, like a few other groups, were kept secret. Only a few cardinals knew of them. Most popes, by the way, did not. I doubt Pope Francis will ever be told about it. He is too liberal and humanist. In any case, it was the mission of this brotherhood to seek out the Unlearnable Truths and to protect humanity from the secrets they contained. This they did by any means necessary. Much blood was spilled. Many heretics were burned or butchered by the Brotherhood, because, after all, sacrifices must sometimes be made to protect the flock.”
“Assholes,” groused Bell. “Are these jerkoffs in possession of the Unlearnable Truths?”
“They have some of them. Not all. Some of the Unlearnable Truths were burned by the Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum, others were locked away in special repositories known only to the Brotherhood. Others still remain hidden, lost perhaps. Or kept by those who seek to understand the mysteries contained therein.”
“If this brotherhood is so secret, how is it that you know of them?”
Priest picked up the beer, looked at it, took a sip, and then set it down. Then he unbuttoned his left cuff and pushed up the shirt and jacket sleeve. There, on the inside of his forearm, was a very old tattoo of a burning cross set against the silhouette of a book.
“As I said, Mr. Bell, this is very much my kind of thing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE BLACK TENT
HOME OF THE MULLAH
ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND ASH-SHAM
MOBILE CAMP #7
AUGUST 20, 1:01 P.M. LOCAL TIME
His handlers kept people away most of the time. These things had to be managed.
Abdullah was his personal aide and Akbar was his bodyguard. There were others assigned to the detail. The rules were simple. Until and unless the Mullah spoke to one of them in the other voice, then the man was to be kept in absolute isolation. This was critical because when he was not the Mullah of the Black Tent, as he came to be called, he was merely Maki Al-Faiz, a frightened man from a tiny village who did not know what was happ
ening to him. Al-Faiz was probably mad, they decided. Touched by God, as the saying went. Al-Faiz would rave and beg and swear that he was not the same person who spoke with his mouth and stood in his body and who directed the actions of the soldiers of the caliphate. That person, the crazy man, was kept far from the public.
Only the Mullah of the Black Tent was allowed to walk free.
He, after all, had become the most important man in this war.
Akbar and Abdullah, both longtime soldiers of the caliphate, were there when Abu Suleiman al-Naser, the head of the War Council and military chief of the Islamic State, came to see the Mullah. That had been such an incredible day, a blessed day. And within a week of that meeting the soldiers of Allah had scored two massive attacks against their enemies. After another meeting with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph himself, special teams of soldiers were able to detonate bombs in Syria, Egypt, and Kurdistan.
The pattern was like that. A high-ranking member of the caliphate would visit with the Mullah and shortly thereafter some great victory would occur.
It was only a matter of time, Akbar confided to Abdullah, before bombs would begin going off in America.
But they were wrong.
It was not bombs that would fall.
It was planes and it was hope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE THIRD PULSE
HOUSTON AIRPORT MARRIOTT HOTEL
HOUSTON, TEXAS
AUGUST 20, 5:02 A.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
Marty Hammond didn’t consider it cheating. No way. Cheating was something you did when there was some kind of emotional commitment. When there was the chance the girl—or the woman—was going to want more, to expect something beyond a dinner, some drinks, a few joints, and a hump in the hay. Cheating was what broke marriages apart, and as Marty saw it, these little encounters—his word of choice—had probably saved his marriage to Connie ten times over.
Connie was great. He loved her. Really loved her. Had since eleventh grade, and always would. They had three kids together. Bobby, who was a senior at LSU; Caitlyn, who was just starting at Emory; and little Cindy, who was still in the ninth grade. Great kids. Good-looking, too, which they got from Connie. Smart as whips, which they got from him. Or, to be fair, maybe a bit from both, because Connie was clueless but she wasn’t stupid. Not by a long walk. She was smart enough in her way, but her way was St. Anthony Park in St. Paul. Connie almost never left her little town. Never willingly, anyway, and never for long. She didn’t like to travel, not even to the islands. She’d gone with Marty to conventions in Jamaica, Aruba, and Hawaii, but after the third one she said that she was done. Tired of traveling. Bored with the whole thing.
That’s what she called it. The “whole thing.” Conventions, travel, meeting new people, parties, mixers, dinners with clients and colleagues, hotels, new places. The whole thing made her long for their home, their two acres of grass and trees with the little koi pond. Connie would rather stay behind even when the International Association of Commercial Realtors had their annual convention at the Paris Casino in Vegas. It boggled Marty’s mind. It made no sense at all. Who the hell did not want to go to Vegas? The crowds, the restaurants, the shows? Really? Ditto for Houston. There was a lot of fun to be had in Houston if you knew where to look. A whole lot of fun.
Not as far as Connie was concerned, though. She’d rather stay back in St. Paul and play bridge. Bridge, for Christ’s sake? Who the hell played bridge anymore? At first Marty thought that it was a code name for Connie and her friends having hen parties where they bring in male strippers and blow them. But he had a buddy of his randomly drop by a couple of times to pick up things from Marty’s home office. What he found was twelve women playing cards and eating those faggy little sandwiches. Marty believed he would actually have been okay with Connie smoking some bone-a-phone. It would be real. Bridge was not real. Bridge was a rerun of Mad Men or some shit like that. Old-fashioned yesterday stuff.
Marty sometimes wondered how the two of them ever managed to have kids. Connie was pretty, and when they were in the mood and in the sack, she had all the right moves. Even some mildly kinky stuff. Did anal twice. Wore a costume a couple of times. Like that. She wasn’t exactly frigid, but she never made the first move. And if he didn’t make a move at all, she seemed cool with it. As if sex didn’t really matter. It wasn’t any kind of serious thing to her.
It was a lot more than that to Marty. Hell yes. He was a man in his prime. Okay, upper end of prime. But these days fifty was the new thirty, or that’s what Marty heard. He had needs. He had urges. He needed to get laid a lot more than Connie ever did, and since he was on the road sometimes twenty, twenty-five weeks a year, either he built up inch-thick calluses on his hand whacking off, or he took a more practical approach. The girls who worked the bars on the convention circuit weren’t street hags. They were pretty. Some of them were gorgeous. And they were clean. You don’t get to work a circuit with high rollers if you’re carrying crabs. No way, Jose.
They were also commitment free. It was no different than any of the business transactions that went on a hundred times a day at these conventions. Marty got his needs met and he didn’t get attached to anyone because no one at these hotels was looking for complications. A little money changed hands. They all took plastic and the billing was discreet. And when the weekend was over Marty went home to Connie. Clean and happy and without issues.
Everybody walked away a winner.
Tonight was just like all the others. He was way up on the sixteenth floor. Nice room, big king bed, and a Korean gal in the bathroom washing round one out of her snatch while he tried to get it up for round two.
“You ready for me?” she asked, her voice floating through the semidarkness.
“Getting there,” he said. Being honest about it because there are things you can fake and things you can’t. And you can’t fool a hooker into believing that a soft dick is a blue steel spike. It would be a professional discourtesy. Besides, he’d been with this one before. Last May and the December before that. Houston was a good conference town. The girl—Lily—knew some tricks to put some iron in the ol’ putter. Yes, sir, she had a full and complete set of techniques for that. Back in December she’d helped him get it up three times. Three. He hadn’t done that since the late nineties. Marty thought his heart was going to explode. So, yeah, he booked Lily again and again. And each time she proved that her skill set was mighty damn impressive. Borderline supernatural.
The drapes were open and outside the sprawl of predawn Houston was gorgeous. Lights by the million, even this early. Glittering like jewels, making him feel rich. Making him feel like he was on top of the damn world. Above the glittering skyscrapers he saw a line of jumbo jets angling down toward Bush airport. They passed directly over the hotel on their way, and somehow imagining all that power roaring above him helped Marty find that tingle that let him know tonight was going to be at least a doubleheader. If not another December hat trick.
“Here I co-o-o-o-ome,” teased Lily. She opened the bathroom door and stood hipshot in the spill of light, her naked body slim and curvy and silhouetted. Marty’s cock jumped. God, she was a knockout. Not one of those big bouncy broads he used to like when he was younger. No. Lily looked like she was maybe fifteen. She had to be at least twice that, but she always played it like she was a kid. A naughty, naughty kid. “Are you redeeeeee?”
His groin throbbed again. “I’m readier than ready,” he said. And he was.
She giggled. He never cared whether her joy was real. Probably wasn’t, but so what? She got wet and she got him hard and what more did either of them need?
“You want the light on or off?” She flicked the switch up and down, creating a strobe behind her.
“Leave it on,” he said. “I want to see you.”
She laughed again, and it sounded real. Happy to be admired. Or whatever. She came running toward him.
And then the lights went out.
All of them.
/>
In the bathroom. The light on the clock. The glow of his iPad over on the desk. Out.
Bang.
The iPod went silent, too. All at once. The U2 mix he had on was gone. Just like that.
Bang.
There was a solid thump on the side of the bed and Lily’s laugh turned to a sharp cry of pain as her shins hit the frame. She cursed and pitched forward into the bed. Marty could hear her but he could not see her.
Not at all.
For a single freaky moment he thought that it was him, that he’d gone blind. That the stress of sex with a woman two or three decades younger than him had pushed his ticker past the red line. He thought, Oh Christ, I’m going to die in a Houston hotel with a Korean hooker. Connie will be pissed.
But it wasn’t him. He understood that a half second later.
Outside, the sky was filled with stars and the lights of Houston were still on. A splash of jewels.
“What’s going on?” asked Lily, and the little-girl quality was gone, replaced by a voice that was colder, harsher, and in no way playful.
“I told you to leave the lights on,” he snapped.
“I did. Maybe there’s a power outage in the hotel.”
As she said it the world seemed willing to prove her wrong.
Outside the lights began changing. First it was the buildings closest to the Marriott. They went dark. Bang. All at once, as if someone had found a single switch that could shut off every light.
Then the buildings across the street from them went out. And the buildings on the next block. The next. The next.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
All dark.
Marty and Lily froze, staring through the glass at the city.
No, staring at the blackness that had been the city. Now it was nothing. Only the upper floors were edged with thin blue lines of starlight. And Marty had an irrational thought.
At least the stars didn’t go out.
It was almost the last thought he had.
He heard the sound then. Not an engine whine. No, he might have understood what was about to happen.